Indian ethnicity marry the same or Indian born......Why??

Good question and I am curious to know the answer too.:idea

 

From my experience, I have seen the Indians who marry foreigners (i.e. white folks etc) are usually women (i.e. indian woman marries foreign man). Rarely do I see an Indian man marrying a white/hispanic/black female. I think Indians chose an Indian spouse because it would be hard for other ethnic groups to understand our culture. There are a lot of weird, nonsensical rituals, a high level of interference from parents which people from other cultures just might not be able to handle.... and also there is differences like taste in food, or religious preferances. A lot of Indians are Hindu, and hardly any non-Indians are Hindu... hence if they want to marry within the religion, they must marry an Indian.

I would have married a non-Indian if I fell in love with a non-Indian. It's just I fell in love with my dh first. Also, he has dated white women and would have had no problem marrying one had he felt she was 'the one'.

My dh commented about this once and said while he was in Dubai (before his first marriage) he liked a British born girl, and they went out with friends to movies and stuff like that, but he never bothered to make the relationship more serious because he knew his mom 1) would not want a white woman and 2) wanted to pick his wife for him. So that was the end of that. So I guess parental pressure could also be a factor.

Actually my dh's cousin in London is Indian and she's getting married to a British man. She is very open minded though and not attached to Indian culture.

Interesting topic.

p.s. Almost forgot!! My husband said one thing he found weird about some American women.... his Indian friend was dating an American woman... and she was white but wanted to convert to being Hindu, change her name to an Indian name, dress up in sarees all the time... it was just weird!! It's great that some women want to embrace Indian culture, but the consensus was in my dh's circle of friends, that you shouldn't change everything about who you are just to embrace a new culture because it's 'cool' or 'in style' at the moment. Some people seem to exotify India (and Indian people) and it comes across as kind of creepy. Come on.... if your name is Pamela, don't change it to Priyanka just because you're dating an Indian!! Hope that's not hurtful to anyone, that's just how I feel.

 

Tara

I can't really speak for Americans of Indian descent, but I'll tell you about South Africans of Indian descent (just under two million of us live in SA). We are third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation immigrants (unlike most Americans of Indian descent, who I'm guessing are first- and second-generation immigrants). We HAD to marry other South Africans of Indian descent, since apartheid prohibited by law the marrying of someone of a different race.

Now that those laws no longer apply, some of my cousins, for example, are married to non-Indian South Africans and foreigners. We don't have arranged marriages, so it's entirely up to us whom we choose. I'm guessing that in the next few decades, we're going to see more "mixed" marriages.

I am the exception to this. I happened to meet and fall in love with an Indian man from India. This is quite a rare occurrence among South African Indians. I only know two other people who have done this. Many Indians from India assume I sought out and deliberately married someone from India.

For me, this happens not to be the case. I'm planning to bring my children up in such a way that they, too, meet and marry a person based on more important factors than race or ethnicity. Having lived through legal discrimination (apartheid) has made me realise how harmful this kind of thinking can be, especially when choices are not made of one's own free will.

I'm guessing, also, that further down the line, more and more people of Indian descent living outside of India will disregard ethnicity as a factor in choice of marriage partner. In my opinion, it's an inevitable consequence of living abroad, and acclimatising into new, global societies.

P.S. You mention that it puzzles you that Indians still marry other Indians in the US despite having grown up in a "diverse community". In my experience, Indian communities in the US are still quite insular - there is some contact with the world at large, but not assimilation as such. When the third- or fourth-generation grows up here, there'll probably be more true assimilation and acceptance of other cultures and customs, and this is probably when we'll see more mixed marriages in the Indian community.

P.P.S. ASG, we cross-posted - I knew I'd see your post on this thread before long

 

Is it also because 'Known devil is better than the unknown devil"...:biglaugh

Also, I think resorting to divorce is not that fast as with especially the white folk... Just my observation.
We love to have endless battles and live amidst that but not jump into separation at the drop of the hat like whites especially......

 

I cud not resist posting on this topic. I have been living in US for last 16-17 years. I came single to do my masters in USA.then worked & after 4 years of living in US met my present dh, dated,lived together to my parents horror(though for not too long) & finally got married.
I did like couple of americans(white/black/jew) but only reason I did not even venture out to dating either was then(15 years ago) many Americans had a very lil or next to no knowledge of india. I wud spend all my time telling them about me/my country of origin/food habits etc.
I had also got engaged to indian born but raised in US for a year. I realized my love of indian movies, politics, our culture & indian gods & him being totally american, aethist & against hindu religion made me break off with him.

But now indians, hinduism,sikhism,buddhism, bollywood, indian food have become part of culture here & most of them born & raised here atleast know a lil bit about india........

so like others have said here in forum.........Africa, west indies etc have gone thru couple of generations of indians & become part of their culture. US is getting there.

 

I think it has more to do with comfort level than anything else such as cultural gap etc., and this holds good for any person, be it an American of Indian descent or and Indian or Indian descent. A person is brought up in a certain way, conditioned to think in a certain way and the person's life experiences shape the preferences, which is probably would would influence the person's choice of a spouse as well. It would be as subjective as someone who would probably not want to marry into a family whose father is in prison or something like that. ( I am sorry, I could not think of a better example to give) Even in my case, though mine was a love marriage, it could have as well been an arranged marriage because my husband belongs to the same community as me! I have been attracted to guys that do not belong to the same community as me, but the thought of marrying any of them never occurred to me only because I knew I would just not be comfortable with the difference in our upbringing/culture etc. That being said, I would still call myself open-minded because I would not frown upon anyone in my family (or if my kids in future) were to choose to spend their lives with someone who would not fit into the conventional mold of a partner in my family. I do not look down upon other cultures/religions/rituals etc., while still respecting and practicing my own. I don't think it makes me any less open-minded because I chose not to act upon my attraction to someone who did not belong to the same community as me!

Btw, there are 3 men in my family who married outside their ethnicity. 2 married white women and 1 married a Mexican. 1 marriage with a white lady failed, not because she had to put up with interfering in-laws or because she had to deal with religious practices, but because she fell in love with someone else and left her husband after 7 years and a child! He re-married an Indian and is happy! The other two are just as happy as anyone else, with visiting in-laws and such.

ASG... I in fact do not find this statement of yours very open-minded, to call the rituals arising out of a group of people's beliefs nonsensical and weird. Also, as far as I have seen, with sons that marry outside their ethnicity, the in-laws seem more intimidated than anything else, and any interference in such a case would probably be a far cry! That's just my opinion though.

I have colleagues who are extremely curious about Indian culture and are quite fascinated by it. I don't think anyone goes out of their way trying to portray anything exotic, but just an obvious reaction to something that's new and interesting to them. I know of a couple here in Austin about an Indian man married to a white woman. She changed her name to a South Indian name, wears sarees all the time (at least all the time that I have seen her in Indian community events), speaks Tamil quite fluently with her kids and husband and is big time into Bharatnatyam. (Some one told me she spent a considerable amount of time in India). I just think that came out of her interest in something that was different from her own and she just chose to embrace it that way. I certainly do not think that change was because she thought it was cool or is the in thing.

 

I live in NJ. I am in USA for last 10 yrs and have met atleast a dozen such couples. Even attended a second gen Indian man's wedding with taiwanese american woman. one more freind married women from ireland in christian way in ireland and hindu way in India. Both dress indian way when among Indians. these still don't have kids. another couple in neighbohood, the american wife is a violinist and lived in mumbai for 2 yrs and taught violin to the son of some well known indian musician. their daughter and son have indian names. Daughter learns both Ballet and Bharatanatyam, and is comfortable in both groups. I feel this couple found right balance and have also done great job with kids by providing the advantage of being multicultural. The kids got the best of both sides. Another neighbor is married to a russian woman and son's first name is american last name is indian father's. Different couples made diff choices. I know two more, one indian and another srilankan tamil who divorced their indian/lankan wives and married american. Sri lankan man once mentioned that he divorced because she was too superstitious and wasn't as open as he wanted and so just moved apart and wasn't much between them to share. I have seen quite a few more. Only strange thing, I found only one man with an african american woman(is dating). all others white.

One more strange thing an american freeind's girlfreind mentioned recently that her sis was dating an Indian guy and her sis really thought marriage was on cards. But the guy broke up saying his parents won't accept and went and married an Indian girl arranged by parents. She was like why did he date then?I thought that was really mean.